Persons and Family Relations (Sta. Maria) PDF

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1 CIVIL CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES PRELIMINARY TITLE Chapter 1 EFFECT AND APPLICATION OF LAWS Article 1. This Act shall be known as the Civil Code of the Philippines. REPUBLIC ACT NUMBER 386. The main draft of the Civil Code was prepared by the Roxas Code Commission, which was created via Executive Ord...

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CIVIL CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES PRELIMINARY TITLE Chapter 1 EFFECT AND APPLICATION OF LAWS Article 1. This Act shall be known as the Civil Code of the Philippines. REPUBLIC ACT NUMBER 386. The main draft of the Civil Code was prepared by the Roxas Code Commission, which was created via Executive Order No. 48 of March 20, 1947 by President Manuel Roxas. Dr. Jorge C. Bocobo was the chairman. The members were Judge Guillermo B. Guevarra, Dean Pedro Y. Ylagan, and Francisco R. Capistrano. Arturo M. Tolentino was added to the Commission but, after a while, had to resign due to his election as a congressman. In his place, Dr. Carmelino Alvendia was appointed. The 1947 Code Commission started working on May 8, 1947 and ended on December 15, 1947. On January 26, 1949, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Philippines passed Republic Act 386, which is “An Act to Ordain and Institute the Civil Code of the Philippines.” Article 2. Laws shall take effect after fifteen days following the completion of their publication in the Official Gazette, unless it is otherwise provided. This Code shall take effect one year after publication. EFFECTIVITY OF THE CIVIL CODE. The 1950 Civil Code of the Philippines took effect on August 30, 1950. 1

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EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 200. Article 2 of the Civil Code has been expressly amended by Executive Order No. 200 dated June 18, 1987 issued by President Corazon Aquino during the time of her revolutionary government. Hereunder is the text of the said executive order: EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 200 PROVIDING FOR THE PUBLICATION OF LAWS EITHER IN THE OFFICIAL GAZETTE OR IN A NEWSPAPER OF GENERAL CIRCULATION IN THE PHILIPPINES AS A REQUIREMENT FOR THEIR EFFECTIVITY. WHEREAS, Article 2 of the Civil Code partly provides that “laws shall take effect after fifteen days following the completion of their publication in the Official Gazette, unless it is otherwise provided x x x’’; WHEREAS, the requirement that the laws to be effective only a publication thereof in the Official Gazette shall suffice has entailed some problems, a point recognized by the Supreme Court in Tañada, et al. v. Tuvera, et al., (G.R. No. 63915, December 29, 1986) when it observed that “there is much to be said of the view that the publication need not be made in the Official Gazette, considering its erratic release and limited readership’’; WHEREAS, it was likewise observed that “undoubtedly, newspapers of general circulation could better perform the function of communicating the laws to the people as such periodicals are more easily available, have a wide circulation, and come out regularly”; and WHEREAS, in view of the foregoing premises Article 2 of the Civil Code should accordingly be amended so that laws to be effective must be published either in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation in the country; NOW, THEREFORE, I, CORAZON C. AQUINO, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Constitution, do hereby order: SECTION 1. Laws shall take effect after fifteen days following the completion of their publication either in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation in the Philippines, unless it is otherwise provided. SECTION 2. Article 2 of Republic Act No. 386, otherwise known as the “Civil Code of the Philippines,” and all other laws

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inconsistent with this Executive Order are hereby repealed or modified accordingly. SECTION 3. This Executive Order shall take effect immediately after its publication in the Official Gazette. Done in the City of Manila, this 18th day of June, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and eighty-seven.

EFFECTIVITY OF LAWS. When a statute does not explicitly provide for its effectivity, it shall have effect only after the expiration of the fifteen-day period following the completion of its publication either in the Official Gazette or in a newspaper of general circulation in the Philippines. The publication and the fifteen-day period requirements are intended to enable the people to become familiar with the statute. They are necessary requisites and no one shall be charged with notice of the statute’s provision until the said publication is completed and the fifteen-day period has expired. Publication must be in full or it is not publication at all since its purpose is to inform the public of its contents (Tañada v. Tuvera, 146 SCRA 446). After the accomplishment of this requirement, the people are deemed to have conclusively been notified of the law even if actually the people or some of the same have not read them. Covered by this rule are presidential decrees and executive orders promulgated by the President in the exercise of legislative powers whenever the same are validly delegated by the legislature, or, at present, directly conferred by the Constitution. Administrative rules and regulations must also be published if their purpose is to enforce or implement existing law pursuant also to a valid delegation. Interpretative regulations and those merely internal in nature, that is, regulating only the personnel of the administrative agency and not the public, need not be published. Neither is publication required of the so-called letters of instructions issued by the administrative superiors concerning rules or guidelines to be followed by their subordinates in the performance of their duties. Accordingly, even the charter of a city must be published notwithstanding that it applies to only a portion of the national territory and directly affects only the inhabitants of that place. All presidential decrees must be published, including even say, those naming a public place after a favored individual or exempting him from certain prohibitions or requirements. The

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circulars issued by the Monetary Board must be published if they are meant not merely to interpret but to “fill in the details” of the Central Bank Act which that body is supposed to enforce. However, no publication is required of the instructions issued by, say, the Minister of Social Welfare on the case studies to be made in the petitions for adoptions or the rules laid down by the head of a government agency on the assignments or workload of his personnel or the wearing of office uniforms. Parenthetically, municipal ordinances are not covered by this rule but by the Local Government Code (Tañada v. Tuvera, 146 SCRA 446).

THE CLAUSE “UNLESS IT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED.” The clause “unless it is otherwise provided” solely refers to the fifteenday period and not to the requirement of publication. Publication is an indispensable requisite the absence of which will not render the law effective. In Tañada v. Tuvera, 146 SCRA 446, where the clause “unless it is otherwise provided” contained in Article 2 of the Civil Code was interpreted by the Supreme Court, it was stated that: it is not correct to say that under the disputed clause, publication may be dispensed with altogether. The reason is that such omission would offend due process insofar as it would deny the public of the laws that are supposed to govern it. Surely, if the legislature could validly provide that a law shall become effective immediately upon its approval notwithstanding the lack of publication or after an unreasonable short period after its publication, it is not unlikely that persons not aware of it would be prejudiced as a result; and they would be so not because of a failure to comply with it but simply because they did not know of its existence. Significantly, this is not true only of penal laws as is commonly supposed. One can think of many non-penal measures, like a law on prescription, which must also be communicated to the persons they may affect before they can begin to operate.

If the law provides for a different period shorter or longer than the fifteen-day period provided by Section 1 of Executive Order No. 200, then such shorter or longer period, as the case may be, will prevail. If the law provides that it shall take effect immediately, it means that it shall take effect immediately after publication with the fifteen-day period being dispensed with. LAWS. Section 1 of Executive Order No. 200 uses the word “laws.” Hence, the effectivity provision refers to all statutes,

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including those local and private laws (Tañada v. Tuvera, 146 SCRA 446), unless there are special laws providing a different effectivity mechanism for particular statutes. Article 3. Ignorance of the law excuses no one from compliance therewith. (2) REASON. The legal precept that “ignorance of the law excuses no one from compliance therewith” is founded not only on expediency and policy but on necessity (Zulueta v. Zulueta, 1 Phil. 254; U.S. v. Gray, 8 Phil. 506; U.S. v. Deloso, 11 Phil. 180; Delgado v. Alonso, 44 Phil. 739). That every person knows the law is a conclusive presumption (Tañada v. Tuvera, 146 SCRA 446). When a law is passed by Congress, duly approved by the President of the Philippines, properly published, and consequently becomes effective pursuant to its effectivity clause or to some provision of a general law on the effectivity of statutes, the public is always put on constructive notice of the law’s existence and effectivity. This is true even if a person has no actual knowledge of such law. To allow a party to set up as a valid defense the fact that he has no actual knowledge of a law which he has violated is to foment disorder in society. However, Article 3 applies only to mandatory and prohibitory laws (Consunji v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 137873, April 20, 2001). Article 3 is a necessary consequence of the mandatory provision that all laws must be published. Without such notice and publication, there will be no basis for the application of the maxim “ignorantia legis non excusat.’’ It would be the height of injustice to punish or otherwise burden a citizen for the transgression of a law of which he had no notice whatsoever, not even a constructive one (Tañada v. Tuvera, 136 SCRA 27). Article 4. Laws shall have no retroactive effect, unless the contrary is provided. (3) NON-RETROACTIVITY OF LAWS. Laws have no retroactive effect, unless the contrary is provided, for it is said that the law looks to the future and has no retroactive effect unless the legislature may have given that effect to some legal provisions, and that statutes are to be construed as having only prospective operation, unless the purpose and intention of the legislature to give them a retrospective effect is expressly declared or is necessarily implied from the

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language used, and that, in case of doubt, the same must be resolved against the retrospective effect (Buyco v. PNB, 2 SCRA 682; Lazaro v. Commissioner of Customs, 17 SCRA 37; Universal Corn Products, Inc. vs. Rice and Corn Board, 20 SCRA 1048; Cebu Portland Cement Co. vs. CIR, 25 SCRA 789). RETROACTIVE APPLICATION. Well-settled is the principle that while the legislature has the power to pass retroactive laws which do not impair the obligation of contracts, or affect injuriously vested rights, it is equally true that statutes are not to be construed as intended to have a retroactive effect so as to affect the pending proceedings, unless such intent is expressly declared or clearly and necessarily implied from the language of the enactment (Espiritu v. Cipriano, 55 SCRA 533). The following are instances when a law may be given retroactive effect: 1. When the law expressly provides for retroactivity. Thus, the Family Code of the Philippines which became effective on August 3, 1988 specially provides in Article 256 thereof that the said code “shall have retroactive effect insofar as it does not prejudice or impair vested or acquired rights in accordance with the Civil Code or other laws.” 2. When the law is curative or remedial. Since curative laws are not within constitutional inhibitions or retrospective legislation impairing the obligation of contracts or disturbing vested rights, statutes of a curative nature which are necessarily retrospective must be given a retrospective operation by the courts (25 RCL 790). The legislature has power to pass healing acts which do not impair the obligations of contracts nor interfere with vested rights. They are remedial by curing defects and adding to the means of enforcing existing obligations. The rule in regard to curative statutes is that if the thing omitted or failed to be done, and which constitutes the defect sought to be removed or make harmless, is something which the legislature might have dispensed with by previous statutes, it may do so by subsequent ones. If the irregularity consists in doing some act, or doing it in the mode which the legislature might have made immaterial by an express law, it may do so by a subsequent one (Government v. Municipality of Binalonan, 32 Phil. 634). Retroactive operation will more readily be ascribed to legislation that is curative or legalizing than to legislation which may disadvantageously, though legally, affect past relations and transactions (People v. Zeta, L-7140, December 22, 1955).

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Hence, in Development Bank of the Philippines v. Court of Appeals, 96 SCRA 342, where there were some questions as to the legality of the purchase of certain lots acquired by the DBP pursuant to Republic Act No. 85 and where Congress enacted Republic Act No. 3147 precisely to correct any invalidity as to the said acquisition, the Supreme Court observed and ruled: “It may be stated, as a general rule, that curative statutes are forms of ‘retrospective legislation which reach back on past events to correct errors or irregularities and to render valid and effective attempted acts which would otherwise be ineffective for the purpose the parties intended.’ They are intended to enable persons to carry into effect that which they have designed and intended, but which has failed of expected legal consequences by reason of some statutory disability or irregularity in their action. They, thus make valid that which, before enactment of the statute, was invalid. There cannot be any doubt that one of the purposes of Congress when it enacted Republic Act No. 3147, by amending Section 13 of Republic Act No. 85, was to erase any doubt regarding the legality of the acquisition by the DBP of the 159 lots from the PHHC for the housing project which it intended to establish for its employees who did not yet have houses of their own. This is obvious from the fact that Republic Act No. 3147 was enacted on July 17, 1961, at a time when the legality of the acquisition of the lots by the DBP for its housing project was under question. It is therefore a curative statute to render valid the acquisition by the DBP of the 159 lots from the PHHC.’’ Also, laws which regulate the registration of instruments affecting titles to land may be held to apply to deeds dated before as well as after their enactment when a reasonable time is given within which the effect of such statutes, as applied to existing conveyances, may be avoided and rendered harmless in respect to vested rights (25 RCL 790). 3. When the law is procedural. When a statute deals with procedure only, prima facie, it applies to all actions — those which have accrued or pending and future actions. Thus, a law prescribing the form of pleadings will apply to all pleadings filed after its enactment, although the action is begun before that time (25 RCL 791). Also, it has been held that while changes in substantive law or Supreme Court judicial doctrines interpreting the application

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of a particular law may not be applied retroactively, especially when prejudice will result to the party that has followed the earlier law or judicial doctrine (People v. Licera, 65 SCRA 270), that principle does not obtain in remedial or procedural law (Araneta v. Doronilla, 72 SCRA 113, citing Aguillon v. Director of Lands, 17 Phil. 507-508; Hosana v. Diomano and Dioman, 56 Phil. 741, 745-746; Guevara v. Laico, 64 Phil. 150; Laurel v. Misa, 76 Phil. 372, 378; People v. Sumilang, 77 Phil. 764, 765, 766). This is especially true in the Philippines where it is within the power of the Supreme Court to excuse failure to literally observe any rule under the Rules of Court to avoid possible injustice, particularly in cases where the subject matter is of considerable value and the judgment being appealed from is, by its nature, reasonably open to possible modification, if not reversal (Araneta v. Doronila, 72 SCRA 413). 4. When the law is penal in character and favorable to the accused. Article 22 of the Revised Penal Code specifically provides that penal laws shall have retroactive effect insofar as they favor the person guilty of a felony, who is not a habitual criminal, although at the time of the publication of such laws a final sentence has been pronounced and the convict is serving the same. Article 62 of the Revised Penal Code provides that a person shall be deemed a habitual delinquent, if within a period of ten years from the date of his release or last conviction of the crime of serious or less serious physical injuries, Robo, Hurto, Estafa, or falsification, he is found guilty of any said crimes a third time or oftener.

Article 5. Acts executed against the provisions of mandatory or prohibitory laws shall be void, except when the law itself authorizes their validity. (4a) MANDATORY AND PROHIBITORY LAWS. A mandatory provision of law is one the omission of which renders the proceeding or acts to which it relates generally illegal or void. Thus, prescriptive periods provided by the law for filing particular suits are mandatory in character. For instance, the Family Code provides, among others, that the husband, in order to impugn the legitimacy of a child, must file a case within one year from the knowledge of the birth of the child or its recording in the civil register, if he should live within the same municipality where the birth took place or was recorded. Should the husband file the case beyond the one-year period, such case will be dismissed.

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Prohibitory laws are those which contain positive prohibitions and are couched in the negative terms importing that the act required shall not be done otherwise than designated (Brehm v. Republic, 9 SCRA 172). Acts committed in violation of prohibitory laws are likewise void. Hence, under the Family Code, it is specifically provided that “No decree of legal separation shall be based upon a stipulation of facts or a confession of judgment.” However, if the law expressly provides for the validity of acts committed in violation of a mandatory or prohibitory provision of a statute, such act shall be considered valid and enforceable. Article 6. Rights may be waived, unless the waiver is contrary to law, public policy, morals or good customs, or prejudicial to a third person with a right recognized by law. WAIVER. Waiver is the intentional relinquishment of a known right (Castro v. Del Rosario, 19 SCRA 196). Waivers are not presumed, but must be clearly and convincingly shown, either by express stipulation or acts admitting no other reasonable explanation (Arrieta v. National Rice and Corn Corporation, 10 SCRA 79). It is essential that a right, in order that it may be validly waived, must be in existence at the time of the waiver (Ereneta v. Bezore, 54 SCRA 13) and it must be exercised by a duly capacitated person actually possessing the right to make the waiver. It is an act of understanding that presupposes that a party has knowledge of its rights, but chooses not to assert them. It must be generally shown by the party claiming a waiver that the person against whom the waiver is asserted had at the time knowledge, actual or constructive, of the existence of th...